Beyond Kriesiland: EU integration as a super issue after the Eurocrisis

Where some researchers have seen only a limited impact of Europeanisation on national party politics, others have added a separate European Union dimension to the pre‐existing economic left‐right dimension to model the national political space. This article examines the effects of the European crisis on the national political space across the EU utilising data from the 2014 European Election Survey. It analyses the effect of a country's economic development on the coherence between attitudes towards the EU and economic issues using multilevel regression. Strong evidence is found that in the Southern European debtor states economic and European issues are merging as a result of strong European interference in their economic policy. In the Northern European creditor states a second relevant dimension focuses on cultural issues. These results offer the next step in theorising Europeanisation.     

Beyond Unionism versus Nationalism: the Rise of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland has always been a polity noted for its strong links between national identity, religion, and voting, and acute British unionist versus Irish nationalist divisions. The constitutional question of whether Northern Ireland should be part of the UK or a united Ireland dominates. Yet, recent surveys have suggested a sizeable and growing section of its electorate declares itself neither unionist nor nationalist. This development may have assisted the growth of the centrist Alliance Party, which rejects unionist and nationalist identities and claims to be neutral on Northern Ireland’s constitutional status. Alliance doubled its vote across three elections in 2019 and is now the third largest party in the region. This article examines the importance of ideological dealignment relative to other factors, such as Alliance’s opposition to Brexit, in explaining the rise of a non-binary party in a divided society.     

A theory of coalitions and clientelism: Coalition politics in Iceland, 1945–2000

Abstract.  This article serves a dual purpose. First, it provides detailed information about coalition formation and termination in Iceland from 1945 to 2000 following closely the format of Wolfgang Müller and Kaare Strøm (eds), Coalition Politics in Western Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which considers the other Western European democracies. The political landscape of Iceland is surveyed, as is the institutional framework that structures the formation of coalitions, coalition governance and cabinet termination while providing complete data for each cabinet. Second, the effects clientelism has on coalition politics through the inflated importance of the executive office are considered. The patterns of coalition politics in the Nordic countries are compared to offer preliminary evidence supporting the theory.     

Agenda control in EU referendum campaigns: The power of the anti‐EU side

European Union (EU) referendums provide unique opportunities to study voters’ attitudes toward a distant level of governance. Scholars have long tried to understand whether EU referendum results reflect domestic (dis‐)satisfaction with the incumbent governments or actual attitudes toward the Union. Finding evidence supporting both domestic and European factors, the recent focus has thus turned to referendum campaigns. Recent studies emphasise the importance of the information provided to voters during these campaigns in order to analyse how domestic or European issues become salient in the minds of voters. These studies nonetheless overlook the asymmetrical political advantage in such campaigns. The broader literature on referendums and public opinion suggest that in a referendum, the ‘No’ side typically has the advantage since it can boost the public's fears by linking the proposal to unpopular issues. This article explores whether this dynamic applies to EU treaty ratification referendums. Does the anti‐EU treaty campaign have more advantage than the pro‐EU treaty campaign in these referendums? Campaign strategies in 11 EU treaty ratification referendums are analysed, providing a clear juxtaposition between pro‐treaty (‘Yes’) and anti‐treaty (‘No’) campaigns. Based on 140 interviews with campaigners in 11 referendums, a series of indicators on political setting and campaign characteristics, as well as an in‐depth case study of the 2012 Irish Fiscal Compact referendum, it is found that the anti‐treaty side indeed holds the advantage if it engages the debate. Nonetheless, the findings also show that this advantage is not unconditional. The underlying mechanism rests on the multidimensionality of the issue. The extent to which the referendum debate includes a large variety of ‘No’ campaign arguments correlates strongly with the campaigners’ perceived advantage/disadvantage, and the referendum results. When the ‘No’ side's arguments are limited (either through a single‐issue treaty or guarantees from the EU), this provides the ‘Yes’ side with a ‘cleaner’ agenda with which to work. Importantly, the detailed data demonstrate that the availability of arguments is important for the ‘Yes’ side as well. They tend to have the most advantage when they can tap into the economic costs of an anti‐EU vote. This analysis has implications for other kinds of EU referendums such as Brexit, non‐EU referendums such as independence referendums, and the future of European integration.     

Growth and the Welfare State in the EU: A Causality Analysis

In this paper, we test for causality between GDP growth andsocial protection expenditure in the European Union. To that end,we apply Hsiao's (1981) sequential procedure to data for twelveEU countries along the 1970–1994 period. Our results suggestthat, for Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,Portugal, and Spain, causality runs only from social protectiongrowth to GDP growth, while for Denmark, France, Greece, Italy,and the United Kingdom, no causality is found between socialprotection growth and GDP growth.     

Beyond the new look: Policy and operations in the Eisenhower administration

Saki Dockrill, Eisenhower's New‐Look National Security Policy, 1953–61 (London: Macmillan, 1996). Pp. xvi + 400, biblio, index. NP. ISBN 0–333–65655–5.

Erika Alin, The United States and the 1958 Lebanon Crisis (Lanham MD: University Press of America, 1994). Pp.160, biblio, index. NP. ISBN 0–8191–9332–1.

Audrey R. and George McT. Kahin. Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia (New York: Norton, 1995). Pp.318, index. £17.95. ISBN 1–56584–244–8.     

Europeans outside the EU: Telecommunications and Electricity Reform in Norway and Switzerland

Norway and Switzerland are two western Europe states that are not members of the European Union (EU), and they are among a number of small and economically open states in which reform of economic sectors is seen to be incremental and reactive. This article poses two questions about the reform of telecommunications and electricity in the two countries. First, what impact has nonmembership of the EU had on the reforms? Second, have their small and open economies and policymaking systems—conceptualized as “social corporatism” in Norway and “liberal corporatism” in Switzerland—had a decisive impact? Some influence from the EU is evident, particularly in telecommunications, but parallels with EU states indicate that nonmembership of the EU, though influential, is not decisive. Although national characteristics matter, social and liberal forms of corporatism are shown to have limited utility. The “actor‐centered institutionalism” approach, which allows a more nuanced analysis of actors and national institutions, is better at explaining the reforms.     

Cosmopolitan Democracy and the EU: The Case of Gender

Cosmopolitan democracy is one of the most debated models of transnational democracy. As a result of his prominence in this field, David Held has attracted much of the criticism and approval of this position. The critique and comment aimed at cosmopolitanism in general, and Held's work in particular, has provoked cosmopolitan advocates to respond, restate and develop their arguments. However, despite its considerable merit, this debate remains largely theoretical, and little has been done in terms of studying the realisation of cosmopolitanism in real-world settings. This article contributes towards the debate concerning the possibility of its actual application by mapping the principles of cosmopolitan democracy in relation to the EU polity and the issue of gender equality. It argues that the EU articulates certain cosmopolitan-comparable principles, and by studying areas where they are clearly exhibited, such as the issue of gender, that this helps us to critically evaluate their practicability and enables a response to criticisms levelled at cosmopolitan democracy. This article addresses two specific criticisms. Firstly, in view of the justiciable qualities of EU law, and its ability to give rise to formal individual rights, it is argued that claims regarding the inherently fictitious nature of cosmopolitan rights are unfounded. Secondly, while acknowledging that civic engagement takes a principally legal mode in relation to the issue of gender, this article rejects the claim that cosmopolitan democracy neglects the political aspects of citizenship. However, cosmopolitan scholars must extend their understanding of the relation between rights and the wider aspects of citizenship engagement, if they hope to realise the vision of an active citizenry that remains central to the cosmopolitan project.     

Beyond the Unit Root Question: Uncertainty and Inference

A fundamental challenge facing applied time-series analysts is how to draw inferences about long-run relationships (LRR) when we are uncertain whether the data contain unit roots. Unit root tests are notoriously unreliable and often leave analysts uncertain, but popular extant methods hinge on correct classification. Webb, Linn, and Lebo (WLL; 2019) develop a framework for inference based on critical value bounds for hypothesis tests on the long-run multiplier (LRM) that eschews unit root tests and incorporates the uncertainty inherent in identifying the dynamic properties of the data into inferences about LRRs. We show how the WLL bounds procedure can be applied to any fully specified regression model to solve this fundamental challenge, extend the results of WLL by presenting a general set of critical value bounds to be used in applied work, and demonstrate the empirical relevance of the LRM bounds procedure in two applications.     

Beyond Hollowing Out: Straitjacketing the State

For two decades, the metaphor of ‘hollowing out’ dominated discussions about the changing role of the state in delivering public services. Today, this metaphor no longer captures important contemporary developments. European Union policy has expanded deeper and deeper into public service sectors, increasingly constraining government's capacities to deliver these services. I suggest a new metaphor to capture this: straitjacketing the state. People are straitjacketed when they are perceived to be at risk of damaging themselves through self‐harm. Straitjacketing the state occurs when a state signs up to a new set of supranational rules which purportedly will help avoid it damaging itself, by restricting room for localised inefficient practices. However, due to the strength of the straitjacket, governments become significantly restricted in choosing policies for domestic implementation according to their preferences.     

The 1994 EU Referendum in Norway: Continuity and Change

In the 1994 EU referendum a majority of Norwegian voters rejected membership in the European Union. The outcome contrasts with victories for membership in the corresponding referendums in Austria, Finland and Sweden. The article reports a preliminary investigation of factors relating to the support for "no". Analysis of aggregate data (representing 435 municipalities) and survey data demonstrates the importance of traditional cleavages as well as new cleavages for the vote. The no-vote was strongest in northern Norway, among supporters of the traditional "counter-cultures" and among those employed in the primary sector. Women were more likely to vote no as were public sector employees. The major parties took relatively clear stands on the issue, and we find that party identification shows a strong correlation with the vote in the referendum. With a turnout of 89 percent, the 1994 referendum represents an all-time high for elections in Norway. Compared with the previous referendum on the EC in 1972, we find that the increase in mobilization was particularly strong in the no-dominated periphery, but the shift in mobilization patterns was not decisive for the outcome of the referendum.     

The political rationalities of regionalism: APEC and the EU in comparative perspective

Abstract

The essay is a comparative analysis of APEC and the EU, which looks at the particular sorts of economic orders these institutions are helping to create. It is argued that the two regions display some noteworthy differences that result from different approaches to the problem of economic governance. These differences reflect much more than the relative degree and level of regional institutionalization; they flow from different ‘political rationalities’ that are themselves a function of the very different liberal and illiberal polities in Europe and East Asia. Our key theoretical innovation is to use the framework of political rationality to explain different regional approaches to economic governance; more specifically we argue that the EU and the East Asian members of APEC may be understood as respectively subscribing to broadly conceived liberal and cameralist approaches to economic governance which are in turn reflected in the design of regional institutions.     

Governing Standards: The Rise of Standardization Processes in France and in the EU

The rise of standardization processes highlights two different paths toward a regulatory state. Within the EU, the New Approach serves as a model for co‐regulation, and European standards have become instruments of supranational governance. In France, standardization is much more part of a renegotiation of the state’s role and influence in a changing society. In both cases, standardization was undertaken with other motives; yet it evolved to answer the strains and constraints exerted upon regulatory processes in the two polities. As such, standards are a case for unintentionality in policy instruments.